Second Matruh Resource Management Project

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The Second Matruh Resource Management Project will improve the livelihoods of disadvantaged rural people living in the Northwest Coastal zone, reducing the incidence of poverty, through community development, capacity building, and access to services to help improve welfare, and increase incomes to conserve, rehabilitate, and use their natural resources in a sustainable manner. The project comprises six components as follows. Capacity building of communities includes an initial training, followed by a criteria, and processes for establishing development activities, prioritizing on resource allocation. It also includes women's development capacity, to allow them partake in the participatory planning process. The integrated natural resource management will focus on: water harvesting, and watershed management, through underground cisterns/reservoirs, dykes of water and soil retention, and, implementation of sustainable watershed management plans; develop a strategy for sustained use of communal resources, managing vegetation together with animals; and, integrate biodiversity conservation, through education, awareness, and capacity building, introducing alternative fuel sources. The development of productive activities comprises an extension outreach, and adaptive research for livestock, crop, and horticulture production, as well as off-farm productive activities, to diversify rural household incomes. The rural roads component will prod the possibility for further sources of income, while the revolving fund, and rural micro-finance component will support the establishment of professional credit retailers in the project area. Project management will fund technical assistance and monitoring, as well as equipment and vehicles.